Article Excerpt: Pennsylvania’s opioid epidemic knows no boundaries or borders. It touches rural and urban areas, former steel towns and bustling downtowns. And approaches to fighting the epidemic are as diverse as the people it impacts. Pitt’s Jeanine Buchanich, a research associate professor in the School of Public Health, is taking a big-picture approach to figuring out what programs will best tackle the problem. Since 2019, she has partnered with the Pennsylvania Department of Health to evaluate community-based programs using data tracking and analysis, funded by an Overdose Data to Action grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Buchanich has evaluated public health interventions as varied as community-level training for first responders on naloxone use and stigma reduction; county and municipal health department prevention efforts; the Patient Advocacy Program, which helps patients who have been prescribed controlled substances; local and statewide provider education efforts and Pennsylvania’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.
Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/ms33x589
Article Source: University of Pittsburgh Pittwire